Tag Archives: Warner Bros.

Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt will be everywhere at once later this month for the premiere of Warner Bros.’ Edge of Tomorrow. Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but they’re aiming to attend three premieres of the film in three separate countries in a single day. That’s the U.K. premiere in London, the France premiere in Paris and the U.S. premiere in New York. It should be quite a feat, but the stars are apparently up for it.

Variety lays out the timeline for these premieres, stating that the London red carpet is scheduled for 7:00 a.m. followed by a 9:00 a.m. screening. Cruise, Emily Blunt and director Doug Liman will head off to Paris from there for the 2:00 p.m. red carpet and 4:00 p.m. screening, after which they’ll jet off to New York, hopefully in time to catch the 10:00 p.m. red carpet and 11:59 p.m. screening. Time zones should be working in their favor once they’re westbound, but that’s a lot of traveling, smiling, question-answering and waving in one day. And it’s a lot of Edge of Tomorrow — assuming they sit for the entirety of all three screenings. Sitting through the same movie three times in one day might start to feel like a real Groundhog Day experience.

Speaking of which…

Edge of Tomorrow will have Tom Cruise’s character, Major William Cage, experiencing a time loop. The story is set in the near future amidst an alien invasion and assault. No military on the planet is capable of dealing with this enemy. Cage is an inexperienced soldier who’s dropped into what’s essentially a suicide mission. He dies almost right away. You’d think that’s a spoiler, but that’s where the time loop comes in. He’s forced to live out the same brutal combat over and over, fighting and dying again and again. Pause for Murray…

Here’s where things in the Edge of Tomorrow plot get interesting through — as if aliens, battles and a time loop aren’t already enticing enough. With every battle, Tom Cruise’s character gets a little bit better at engaging the enemy. With the help of Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), Cage continues to get closer, bit by bit, to defeating the aliens. And it sounds like he dies a lot.

Admittedly, my interest in Tom Cruise isn’t enough to to draw my attention to Edge of Tomorrow, especially amidst so many other promising summer movies, however CW (partially owned by Warner Bros., it’s worth noting) aired the full trailer during last night’sArrow, and that got my attention…

While Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt might actually get to see the movie three times in one day, later this month, the rest of us will have to wait until June 6 when Edge of Tomorrow arrives in theaters. Let’s hope it lives up to its promising premise and thrilling trailer!

Just yesterday we learned that Warner Bros. has put two untitled animated projects on their release schedule for 2017 and 2018 respectively, and now we have a fairly good idea what one of those mystery movies is going to be. News has broken that the studio is now developing a brand new feature based on the classic cartoon series The Flintstones.

In their report about the development, Variety says that writer/producer Chris Henchy – who is best known for his work alongside Will Ferrell and Adam McKay as part of Gary Sanchez Productions – has been tapped to write the script, while his producing partners will be doing just that. The Flintstones movie will presumably follow the same basic formula as the original Hanna-Barbera cartoon and focus on the life of Fred Flintstone, the blue coller bronto crane operator at the prehistoric Slate Rock and Gravel Company, and his family and friends.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that the Flintstones have made their way to the big screen – albeit last time it was done in live-action. The 994 director Brian Levant helmed an adaptation of the long-running, award winning series that starred John Goodman, Elizabeth Perkins, Rick Moranis, Rosie O’Donnell, Kyle MacLachlan, Halle Berry and Elizabeth Taylor. Remember?

Despite getting terrible reviews, the film was a huge hit, grossing $341 million worldwide on a $46 million budget. This turned out to be rather unfortunate, given that it eventually led to the creation of The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas, a film that got reviews equally as bad as its predecessor and wound up being a huge box office flop, making just $59 million worldwide on an $83 million budget. We can only pray that things go better this time around.

Given the aforementioned 2017 and 2018 release dates, it will probably be a long, long time before we actually get to see anything from the Flintstones movie, but it’s not hard to see why Warner Bros. is so excited about making more animated films. Even withCaptain America: The Winter Soldier having been out for more than a month now, Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s The LEGO Movie remains the highest grossing film of 2014 domestically, having made more than $250 million Stateside (not to mention the extra $204 million it has made internationally). There is a lot of money to be made with good animated films that attract both young and adult audiences, so we’ll just have to wait and see if The Flintstones can be that.

When X-Men: Days of Future Past writer and producer Simon Kinberg stepped in for director Bryan Singer at last weekend’s WonderCon in Anaheim, he wasn’t shy about Fox’s future outlook for everyone’s favorite Mutants. He didn’t divulge any outright plans, but he did discuss the possibility of an X-Men TV series and an R-rated Deadpoolmovie.

Fox also has other Mutant related titles that fall under the X-Men banner, with Deadpool,New Mutants and X-Force all rumored to be getting their own movies sometime soon. But what is Fox going to do with all these titles? Will they huddle them altogether for aMarvel’s The Avengers-like ensemble? Simon Kinberg talks about working towards that.

“Yeah, they definitely understand what they have now in a way that, having worked on the X-Men Fox movies since 2003, [it was a] different regime, really different culture inside the studio [back then], but outside the studio like you say, the juggernauts, the big movies of every summer are [now] superhero movies. We’re gonna have three big superhero movies in the span of like a month and a half between Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and us. So Fox does understand that they are sitting on this massive universe with the X-Men, also with The Fantastic Four obviously. But they definitely have a sense of it and there’s a real interest and appetite for how to explore and expand that world into other movies, into spin-offs, into different time periods, the whole gamut.”

At this time, Marvel is working to bring four titles to Netflix in the form of television dramas, with Daredevil kicking off things in 2015 followed by Luke Cage, Iron Fist andJessica Jones. This will culminate in an epic The Defenders miniseries. They also haveMarvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. currently airing on ABC (though it hasn’t yet been renewed for season 2) and are planning to launch Marvel’s Agent Carter this winter. While Sony doesn’t currently have any plans for a Spider-Man TV series that we know of, DC and Warner Bros. are finding great success with Arrow on The CW, and it will soon be followed by The Flash. They also have Constantine at NBC and the Batman inspiredGotham at Fox. What about 20th Century Fox and X-Men, though? Are there plans for a mutant TV series?

“We’re still in this place of figuring out what the future of the franchise will be, but when you look at Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. to some extent and what Marvel is doing now with Daredevil and other shows on Netflix, it makes sense to tell some of these stories in TV partly because there’s just not enough screens to do all these characters, and also because the serialized format of comic books is better suited for TV. Because that’s it, every week you come back to the same characters different story, and in comic books every week it’s the same characters, different story. I think what [Fox is] seeing now is with the proliferation of new kinds of visual and special effects, there’s a way to make these stories that doesn’t cost $300 million every time you have to make a huge movie.”

Mutants have invaded TV before. Avi Arad produced Mutant X, which followed a group of ‘new mutants’ for three seasons in syndication from 2001 to 2004. But it wasn’t based on characters from the X-Men comics, and actually spurned a lawsuit between Marvel and 20th Century Fox. In 2003, the two parties resolved their differences in a confidential settlement. There was also the 1996 Fox TV movie Generation X, which was a spin-off of the X-Men and portrayed some of the members we’ve seen in the more recent movies.

Finally, Simon Kinberg commented on the prospects of an R-rated Deadpool movie, something that has long been discussed and continues on in development. It sounds like we’ll see it at some point, but who knows when?

“Yeah, it makes sense to me. Genuinely it’s early phases, early days, but if you’re gonna do a Deadpool movie, I think you’ve gotta do a hard-R, darker movie and he is the perfect character to do it with.”

Are you excited about the idea of an X-Men TV series? Should they make Deadpoolsooner than later? Anything is possible in the world of Marvel mutants.Deadpool is in development and stars Ryan Reynolds.

There is a great game of chicken being played out between Disney and Marvel Studios and their rival DC Comics and Warner Bros. Marvel was first to stake a claim in the prime May 6, 2016 release date, though they didn’t reveal their title right away. Because of production delays, Warner Bros. and DC were forced to move their epic Man of Steelsequel Batman Vs. Superman out of summer 2015. And they decided to move in on Marvel’s turf.

Rightly thinking that pairing two of comics most iconic superheroes would trump anything Marvel had to offer, it seemed like Disney would have to rethink its strategy for 2016. There was no way the untested Doctor Strange could face off against these DC giants. Everyone thought Marvel would surely turn tail and find another open weekend. But no, they announced they weren’t moving. And not only that, they revealed that it would beCaptain America 3 opening on that prime piece of real estate.

Quite a few fans balked. There was no way Captain America 3 could take on the two-fisted punch of Batman Vs. Superman. But then Captain America: The Winter Soldieropened to rave reviews from critics and fans alike. It was a winner. Not only that, it became a box office success with three #1 weekends in a row domestically. It has now earned $200 million in just three weeks, with a global take of $585 million.

But still, it can’t win against Batman Vs. Superman, can it? While Disney was set to stand firm on their May 6, 2016 release date, it sounds like they are the first to start swerving the wheel. While its unclear who would be the winner, opening two huge blockbusters on the same weekend will mean financial loss for both studios. And Marvel wants all the money it can get.

Disney CEO Alan Horn was speaking at the Tribeca Film Festival today in New York, and revealed that the studio is currently struggling with the release date.

This is obviously the first sign of weakness. Will DC and Warner Bros. even consider backing down now? That remains to be seen, but it looks like Marvel may lose this battle. Or, if we look at it a different way, their schedule change for Captain America 3might make them the bigger winners. What do you think should happen?

With Marvel even further strengthening the narrative ties between its film and television properties, many fans are clamoring for Warner Bros. to take a similar cohesive approach to its DC Comics characters on the big and small screens. Considering the popularity on The CW’s Arrow, and anticipation for the spinoff The Flash, diehards are looking for links between those superhero dramas and the upcoming Man of Steel sequel, which will introduce not only the new Batman but Wonder Woman.

However, David S. Goyer, who wrote Man of Steel and its follow-up and is producing NBC’sConstantine, says it may be a little too soon to plot such a tightly interconnected DC Cinematic Universe.

“I mean, it’s too early. I know that Warner Bros. would love to make their universe more cohesive,” he tells IGN. “There have been a lot of general conversations about that, but it’s really, really early. I’m not sure. Marvel has had enormous success, but I’m not sure that everybody should try to emulate them either. It’s just been vague conversations so far.”

Indeed, Warner Bros. has a great many DC Comics-based properties in the pipeline. In addition to the Man of Steel sequel set for 2015, a Sandman film is currently in development. Television projects include the aforementioned Arrow, The Flash and Constantine along with Fox’s Gotham series and the adaptation of Vertigo’s iZombie at the CW.